Before the bashing begins, just hear me out. I've liked the character of the modern age Superboy for two reasons: a) He's more conflicted than Superman and b) Superboy's a bit of a smart-mouth when it comes to his "superhero" work.

For a while now I've been thinking about how Superboy (not Jason White!) would work in the SR continuity. Well, if you remember from SR when Superman lifts his hand after unknowingly touching the kryptonite ore in Lex's landmass his fingers are bleeding. Now this would involve a bit more retconning but le's theorize that Lex was able to obtain a bit of Superman's blood (or hair or whatever, some piece of Superman's genetic material) and after being foiled in SR came up with another plan: using Superman's DNA and the money he swindled from Gertrude, he begins Project Cadmus with the help of Dr. Paul Westfield.

Now i'm more than aware that Superboy was created by Project Cadmus after Superman's death, so Superboy's origin would change somewhat to conform to the SR continuity. Instead of being created with the purpose of replacing Superman after his death, Superboy would be created as a weapon to destroy Superman. So the movie would follow Superboy's journey from Superman's intended assassin to Superman's ally, eventually leading to him being christened Kon-El at the end and possibly allowing for a spinoff movie series (if this isn't one already lol)

If anyone's interested I'd be more than happy to post more details, as this is only a very rough sketch of the background and plot.

Your idea is solid in its own right, but wouldn't work in the realm of Returns. The DNA would most likely be used to create Bizzaro.